


Proof of the Devil

by SomeoneAsGoodAsYou (the_wanlorn)



Series: The Devil in Broad Daylight [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I said I would read 100000000 fics about this, Post-Finale, and lucifer having a meltdown, really this is just a fic about chloe rolling with it, reveal repurcussions, so it's only fair that I contribute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wanlorn/pseuds/SomeoneAsGoodAsYou
Summary: In which it's all true, and yet it doesn't change anything. Chloe rolls with it like always when faced with Lucifer's weirdness, and Lucifer runs like always, when faced with Scary Emotions.





	Proof of the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> This is un-beta'd because A) how do people even find betas in this, the post-LJ age? and B) I am v impatient and wanted to get it up before Monday's double episiodes.
> 
> Sorry for the excessive commas and italics. There was no one to tell me no.

The absolute truth was: it had stopped mattering whether or not she could prove Lucifer was the Devil a long time ago.

At some point, she had just... stopped caring. The mystery had faded, the drive to truly _know_ Lucifer had faded. She didn't need to be able to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was delusional. She knew him — she _knew_ him — and no matter what he said, she knew he had a good soul. And that was what was important.

It had been months, over a year, since she'd last found herself going over the evidence that what he was broadcasting to the world was true. Sure, there were things she couldn't explain, flashes of firey eyes and a horribly burned face, but it was easy enough to push those things away and blame them on her imagination. The face alone, flesh melted and scarred, couldn't be real. It would be too physically painful to bear, and she couldn't stand to think that Lucifer held all that pain underneath a mask.

He was a _good person_ , which she tried to keep in mind as she whispered, "It's all true," to herself. As she stared at the burned face, the wild eyes, that couldn't possibly be real.

He was stepping forward, saying her name, concern tinging his voice, and it was all she could do not to step backward, away from him.

"Don't," she said before she could stop herself. It was unfair, especially after telling him that he wasn't the Devil to her. Not to her.

A strange calmness was taking her over, even as she wanted to laugh hysterically, wanted to rage against him for telling her the truth all along, but not _telling_ her the truth. Bluffing was still a form of lying, wasn't it?

Go- Oh Je- Oh _no_ , she was going to have to find new exasperated exclamations. She couldn't keep using the G-word when He was real.

"Detective," Lucifer was saying, his voice coming in and out of focus as she alternated between panic, anger, and a calm that couldn't be normal. "Are you alright? Are you-"

He reached for her, and she flinched. Fuck but this was going to take some getting used to. And she would, she knew that. He was still the same person as he had been ten minutes ago. He was just... also the Devil. _Not to me_ echoed around her head in the back of every thought.

"No." His voice, infinitely soft and infinitely terrified, breaking in the middle of the word, drew her out of her spiral. "No no no, not now, not like this. Why now?" He had cast his eyes to the sky as he stepped backward one, two, five steps and more, almost like he was running.

He looked at her, probably taking in her pale face and seeing the wideness of her eyes, her irises just tiny circles in a sea of fear-white. She'd seen enough victims, enough people scared out of their minds by Lucifer, to know what she must look like. She tried to force herself to calm down and look nonchalant, but it was too late to fool him.

And Lucifer... Lucifer's gaze swept around the room, not landing on her for more than the briefest of seconds. She recognized the absolutely devastated look on his face just before he turned from her, striding over to Pierce's — _Cain's_ , oh god, she had almost married the first murderer — corpse and pulling out the knife.

"I'm sorry," he said, so soft she almost didn't hear him. For a moment she thought that he was talking to Pierce, but then he turned to her, his eyes shining and full of resignation through their fire and something terrifyingly close to heartbreak. "I'm sorry, Detective. I want you to know that these years have been-" he closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard before opening them again. She was almost getting used to them, the way they burned with feeling and fire. They had always been intense, now they were just intense in a slightly different way.

Okay, more than slightly.

"Nothing could compare to them," he continue. "You are... indescribable."

She narrowed her eyes at him. This was starting to sound an awful lot like "goodbye," and she had way too many questions — starting with why the hell (oh no) hadn't he shown her before and ending with what the fuck happened while she was unconscious — for that. Even if she hadn't had a practical reason, she didn't think her heart could take it if he just up and disappeared again.

That appeared to be the end of his short speech, and with a great rustling of feathers, two red-flecked wings sprouted from his back. With a mighty flap, he rose, aiming for the roof. She could hear sirens in the distance, getting closer, and a part of her couldn't believe he was leaving her alone to deal with the aftermath by herself.

He only managed to get halfway to the ceiling before he faltered and plummeted to the ground with a strangled cry of pain.

He landed hard with another strangled cry, and rolled over onto his stomach, his wings laying in a limp heap over him.

(His _wings_ , and she had questions about those too. She really should be making a list. Which had another semi-hysterical giggle bubbling up in her throat. He was the literal Devil, and here she was, preparing to grill him later like a suspect.)

( _Not to me_.)

She was moving without thinking, skidding to a stop next to him and dropping to her knees as he flinched away from her, his burned hands over his face as he shuddered. With dawning horror, she realized that his wings weren't flecked with color, they were flecked with _blood_. Underneath the feathers, the skin was ripped to shreds; she wouldn't be surprised if his bones had been fractured, too.

"Oh, Lucifer," she breathed out, reaching out to him only to stop when he flinched and began pushing himself to his feet.

"I-" he said once he was upright.

"You need to either change your face back or leave," she said when he didn't continue, instead of trying to reach out to him again.

"Yes, of course," he said, turning, and she had the sinking feeling that he was taking her dismissal entirely the wrong way, but the sirens were close enough that she didn't have time to coddle him and smooth his feelings. Not when they were about to be swarmed by cops and she was, if she were being honest, still kind of freaking out.

His wings shook as they folded back, the last second before they popped out of existence entirely causing a rolling nausea to go through her at how _wrong_ the movement was, as if they hadn't gotten the message that space was 3D and there were laws of motion that couldn't be broken.

He was the Devil, what did he care about laws of nature? Was the world even 3D to him or did he see more dimensions? Is that where his wings had gone, to some other dimension, or was it some sort of glamour? Was he — she almost couldn't swallow the hysterical giggle bubbling in her throat again — the mantis shrimp of people?

She shook her head slightly, watching as Lucifer walked away. He paused in the doorway, looking like he might turn back and say something, but then his shoulders slumped and disappeared through it.

Fuck.

* * *

Someone must have gotten the news to the parts of their family waiting at Lux, because when she finally dragged herself home after long, exhausting hours of giving her (carefully fabricated) statement, Dan was waiting for her with Trixie. She slumped into his hug, little tremors going through her body as she fought off the sudden need to cry. The last thing she could do was start stress-bawling in front of Trixie.

"Mommy?" Trixie asked from where she had her face buried in Chloe's hip.

"Yeah, baby?" she asked, internally wincing at the way the exhaustion colored her voice.

"Did you get the bad guy?"

"Don't we always?" she asked, forcing a smile and running a hand over Trixie's head. "Yeah, we did. And everyone's okay."

"Good," Trixie said, but her arms were tight around Chloe's waist.

"Come on," Chloe said, glancing to the clock. It was well past time for Trixie to be in bed, but she wasn't sure she had the heart to make her actually go to sleep alone. "Let's go camp out in the living room, okay? It'll be like a sleepover."

In no time, Trixie was asleep, sandwiched between Chloe and Dan and covered in far too many blankets for the heat. Dan looked at her, a searching gaze that she still wasn't used to seeing from him.

"What really happened?" he asked. "One of the guys at the station called just before you got home, said you seemed pretty shaken up." He paused. "And that there were some strange things about the crime scene that he couldn't get into."

She shook her head, her breathing picking up. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she muttered, and Dan chuckled.

"Lucifer pulled a Lucifer?" he asked.

She barked out a laugh, swallowing it quickly before she could wake Trixie. "You could say that. If he had been there. Which he wasn't."

"Of course," Dan said easily, so different from the man she had married and divorced. She wasn't sure what had happened over the intervening time, but he had become one of her best friends. In another life, maybe they could have made it work again.

But she was far too hung up on Lucifer. Who was the Devil. And who had _definitely_ run away from her at the crime scene. Fuck. Oh, fuck, she needed to go to him but she couldn't leave Trixie behind, and she didn't want to wake her up just to drag her to Lux. Not when she didn't know what kind of condition Lucifer would be in. Those wings...

"I-" she said, her throat suddenly thick with an emotion she couldn't quite name. "I need to-"

Dan gave her a knowing look, and nodded toward the kitchen. "Go. I'll stay in case Trixie wakes up."

"No," she said, "I'm not leaving, I just... I need to make a phone call."

"Well if you change your mind..."

She laughed harshly, her eyes widening in surprise at how loud it was as she choked back the noise. "Yeah, that's not happening tonight. But thank you."

Once she'd slipped out of Trixie's grasp, she moved to her bedroom where she could have a bit of privacy. To call the Devil, who she had on speed dial. It kept going around in her head, the thought that Lucifer was the Devil followed swiftly by the reminder that she knew him, that he was a good person, each thought being chased by her "not to me." Talk about mixed messages.

Lucifer's phone went straight to voicemail. Not a good sign. She left a quick, "Call me," before hanging up and trying Maze.

"What?" Maze snarled, picking up after the fourth ring.

"Uh," Chloe said, suddenly incredibly aware that one of her best friends was a literal demon. It explained so much.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Behind the snarling anger in her voice ran a deep thread of hurt that had Chloe standing up straight from where she had slouched against the door frame.

"No, wait!" she said, clutching the phone harder, making her fingers ache where the edges pressed against them. "I-"

" _What_?" Maze snarled before Chloe could gather her thoughts enough to figure out what she wanted to say. The hurt underlying her tone wasn't enough to stop anger from rising in Chloe.

"Jesus Ch- _Fuck_ , Maze, what is your problem?" It seemed like now that she knew she couldn't say any of that, all she wanted was to blaspheme.

Maze let out a humorless chuckle before saying, "I don't have time for this. I need to deal with the mess _you_ left."

"What?" What the fuck, if anything it had been Lucifer who'd left a mess, and she had — hopefully successfully — explained it away as some sort of religious cult thing that Pierce was a part of.

Glass clinked in the background, and she winced. Lucifer drank all the time, had raised day drinking to an art, so she she couldn't be blamed for driving him to drink. And yet, she couldn't help but feel guilty, remembering the kicked dog look he'd been sporting before she told him to leave. And she'd just... kicked him, just like he expected. Maze's heels clacked against the floor, barely audible through the phone. When she spoke again, she was quieter and sounded exhausted.

"Look, Decker, if you can't handle the truth, you need to walk away. Now."

"It's a lot to take in," she protested. "Is he... How is he?"

"How do you think, after you just send him away like a-" Maze sounded furious again, and it was raising Chloe's hackles and pinging on her fight-or-flight response.

"Excuse me?" she interrupted, unable to tell if it was guilt or anger fueling her. "What was I supposed to do? Let half the cops in LA see him like that? After the way he reacted to _me_ seeing him?"

Maze was quiet for a long moment while Chloe fumed. How _dare_ she imply that Chloe had been doing anything but trying to protect both of them, while also, admittedly, freaking out over everything that had been revealed.

"If you ever tell anyone I told you this, I'll eviscerate you, got it?" Maze finally said, just when Chloe was about to start ripping her a new one. Instead, she had to swallow back her anger — talk about a night for mood swings — while Maze continued. "He could really use some... company."

She said the last word with a sneer that Chloe could just picture, probably disgusted with how she was talking about feelings and meaning platonic company instead of Lucifer's usual brand of "company."

"I can't," she said, grimacing. She knew how it sounded, but it was true.

"Decker-" Maze growled, and Chloe hurried to interrupt her.

"I can't leave Trixie alone right now, and she's asleep. I can't get her up and drag her across the city to Lux just so I can yell at him." _And make sure he's okay_ , she added in her head. The image of his wings, torn apart and covered in blood — blood from the bullets he had protected her from — kept passing before her eyes. "Can you tell him... Tell him if he wants to come over and talk, I can kick Dan out."

"Dan's there?" Maze asked. There was something dark in her voice. This conversation was becoming tiring.

"Yeah, for Trixie. Look, I need to go, can you just tell him? Or put him on the phone?"

"Yeah," Maze grunted. "Fine. You better not fuck this up."

"I won't," Chloe said to the dead line. She only belatedly realized she should have asked _Maze_ what her plans were, and made it clear she was always — and still — welcome. That she was still Tribe.

She tried Lucifer's number again, but it was still going to voicemail, and she didn't leave another one. She wandered back to the living room, a smile at the site of Dan, curled protectively around Trixie, crossing her face. Both of them were fast asleep, looking angelic, and did that count as blasphemy?

Quietly, she lay down at Trixie's other side, brushing a stray hair off her face and kissing her gently on the forehead. Something uneasy kept stirring in her stomach, but she put it aside for the moment. She could go see Lucifer tomorrow, when Trixie was in school. With a sigh, she closed her eyes, and waited for sleep to come.

* * *

The elevator ride to the penthouse had never felt as long as it did while Chloe worried she was going to step out and find Lucifer's apartment covered in drop cloths again, and him gone. Maybe for good this time. She didn't know if she could take that, not after everything they've been through together and how hard she'd worked — how hard they'd _both_ worked — to get where they were now. She couldn't picture her life without him in it, and was praying — not literally — that he felt the same.

She almost missed him, eyes sliding over the open doors to the balcony as she stepped out of the elevator. But something made her turn back, maybe the breeze across her skin or maybe just the way she'd grown able to sense him, the same way she could sense where Trixie was in the house and if she was getting in trouble. He was hunched over, leaning against the railing, a cigarette — nope, she realized as the breeze brought the smell toward her, it was a joint — dangling from one hand, the other curled loosely around the neck of a bottle of whiskey.

"I told you to get out, Maze." His voice was rough, rougher than she'd ever heard it. "Don't make me tell you again."

"Sorry to disappoint," Chloe said, moving forward as he whipped his head around to stare at her, stiffening in shock. "It's just me."

"What-" he said, his mouth working to finish the sentence but no sound coming out. His face was back to normal, but she swore she saw it flicker for a moment, swore that his eyes burned with hellfire for just a second before he straightened and turned away.

"Maze told me you could use some company," she said, immediately regretting it as a chill filled the room.

"Oh, of course," he said, ice dripping from his voice. "I hardly think I need your pity, Detective. You can go now, I'm fine."

She snorted and came to stand beside him, far enough away that she wasn't crowding him, but close enough that hopefully he knew she wasn't freaking out (as much) anymore. Instead of sleeping, she had spent the night thinking. Running over every time Lucifer had done something strange, really examining the incidents instead of nervously letting her attention skitter away. It had been... illuminating. She could see that he had never lied to her, and that he had skirted the truth so sharply on occasion it was a miracle he wasn't sliced to ribbons.

In the end, with all of his Devil talk and all of the strange events that went on around him, he was still Lucifer. Her Lucifer. He wasn't any different today from the day before, maybe more hurt, more damaged, but not in a dangerous way. Not in a way that was a threat to her and Trixie's safety. He was only ever a threat to himself, had always only even been a threat to himself. By the time it Dan got up and it was time to wake Trixie up, she had made her peace with the new knowledge.

The knowledge that Lucifer didn't trust her enough to tell her the whole truth and nothing but, however... That was harder to make peace with.

"Good," she said, "because I'm not here to offer you pity. And you don't look fine to me."

His clothing was rumpled, his hair wild, and there was something almost feral about the light in his eyes. He looked... broken. Like he was trying to glue himself back together but a wrong word or movement from someone would shatter him. She really hoped she wasn't going to be that someone.

He turned back to stare across the city and took a long pull of the whiskey. "So, what's it to be, Detective? Are you here to run the monster out of town? Or just to warn me off you and your family?"

She cocked her head a little, studying the profile of his face. He kept stealing tiny, nervous glances to her, but never looking at her full on. He was tense, waiting for her answer, waiting for her to choose between two impossible options. As far as he was concerned, there was no choice C; it was written in the lines of his face that he couldn't see any outcome that wasn't her walking away.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said softly. "Nothing has changed, not for me." Sometime around four, the "not to me" bouncing around her head had quieted as she came to accept that nothing had truly changed for her. He was still Lucifer, she was still Chloe, and she was still half in love with the Devil.

" _Everything_ has changed," he sneered. "Everything." He took a long drag of the joint, grimacing after blowing the smoke out. If he was truly the Devil, did that even have any affect for him? Was that why he was almost never without a drink in his hand when they weren't working? Because it took a day of drinking to build up a buzz? She had so many questions. "Which is your choice?"

"Neither," she said. She reached for him, intending to offer him physical proof that she wasn't going anywhere, that she wasn't afraid of him. But he quickly sidestepped her, moving out of arm's reach.

He clicked his tongue at her. "It won't be that easy," he said, and she didn't bother to ask for clarification on what he meant. When he brought the joint to his lips, she saw a fine tremor going through his hand. Whether it was from the alcohol or from fear, she couldn't tell, but she hoped it was the former.

"Lucifer," she said, stepping forward, and forward again for each step he took back, until there as nowhere for him to go but over the rail. He glanced backward, out to the open air, and she had a sudden vision of him plunging over the edge the same way she sometimes woke up from nightmares that were nothing but him yelling "shoot me," followed by a hail of bullets that he didn't walk away from. "Don't you dare."

His gaze shifted to her, and for a moment, she thought he was going to do it, just to escape her. She almost backed off, unsure if his wings had healed and could hold him, but before she could give in and move, he slumped and shook his head, his voice strained when he said, "I don't understand what you want from me."

She stepped up into his space and reached out, cradling his cheek in her hand. He leaned into the caress for the briefest second before jerking back, as much out of reach as he could get "Nothing that I didn't want before."

It almost looked like he was going to believe her, but then he shook his head and stepped around her, careful not to touch her, a look on his face like if she played the next few moments wrong it would break him in ways he would never recover from.

"You don't mean that," he said as he started to walk away.

Before he was out of reach, she grabbed the elbow of his suit, stopping him in his tracks. He looked down at her hand, then finally met her gaze. "Why don't you let me decide what I mean and don't mean." she said, making sure her voice was even and not trembling with frustration.

He shook his head in denial, but she thought she caught a glimmer of something that might be hope in his eyes for the briefest second before it died and was replaced by something that had her aching to pull him into her arms and tell him everything would be okay.

"You don't understand," he said. Adding, under his breath, "If only you knew..." and shook his head.

"Knew what?" she asked. He let her into his space without resistance this time, but made no move to touch her the way she was used to him doing. Had it really been so little time from when they were happy? From when it seemed like Lucifer was finally getting his shit together enough that she could... 

"Are you sure you want to know? Truly?" Something in his voice, in his gaze, had her reconsidering for a moment. "You-" he started when she didn't respond, closing his eyes. "You should go, before you come to your senses."

She scoffed. "Why is it so impossible for you to believe that I'm not going anywhere?"

He frowned, studying her face. "Do you not remember yesterday? Do I need to remind you that I'm a _monster_?"

It was like his face melted. One moment, he was the handsome devil she was used to, and then his features melted into the scarred visage that was burned into her memory. His eyes lit up with hellfire, and something deep inside her ran screaming. Something less deep, and much larger, wanted to know- "Does it hurt?"

He blinked.

She reached out, her hand hovering just over his cheek, not quite touching. He was watching her with wide eyes, frozen but poised to flee. She waited him out, a patience born from dealing with Trixie and Dan for years working in her favor.

Finally, he leaned back a little, and shook his head. "Not anymore," he said, his voice rough.

"Okay," she said, "Good." He was eyeing her with a distrustful wariness, like a dog waiting for a beating. "This doesn't change anything," she told him as his features faded back to normal. "Or, well, it changes a lot, but not the most important things. I still-"

He shook his head, stepping back and bringing up his hands, bottle of whiskey in one and joint in the other, as though warding her off. She stayed where she was, not backing off but not pressing into his space either. "I'm sorry, Detective," he said. "But you don't know the whole story and, I must confess, I've been selfish in keeping it from you."

She stood her ground, a sense of dread filling her. What could he possibly be talking about? He had never lied to her, but he _had_ kept things from her, sin of omission and all that. He was so upfront about being the Devil, what could he possibly have been hiding?

"You..." he paused, closing his eyes. "You, Chloe Decker, are a miracle." She started to smile at his ridiculousness, but he continued before she could. "Your mother... God sent Amenadiel to bless her so that she could have a child. You. He made it possible for you to be born so that one day, I would meet you and fa-" He cut himself off, but she had a good idea of what he was about to say, and held back a smile as he looked away.

"Okay," she said, nodding a little and filing it away as something to think about later, that her mother was literally blessed by an angel. Of all the people in the world...

Lucifer was silent for a moment, watching her out of the corner of his eyes, fidgeting a little as the silence drew on. She raised an eyebrow at him, waiting. Finally, he burst out with, "That's it? I tell you that my Father put you on this earth specifically for me, and all you have to say is, "okay"?"

Anguish had filled his features as he talked, pulling them down in harsh lines and making her want to smooth a hand over the sharp planes of his face. "Am I not human?" she asked instead.

"Of course you're human," he said, looking horrified at the very question. "You just... are a little extra."

"And humans have free will, right?" she continued, thinking fast. "Wasn't that your whole thing?"

He grimaced. "Yes, humans have free will, but you don't understand. Dad _put you here_. For me. He brought you into being and-"

"I'm pretty sure it was my parents who brought me into being," she said evenly. She ached to move closer to him, but he looked on edge, like a feral cat that would flee if she moved too quick or too close.

"But-" He seemed at a loss for words, and she was kind of miffed that he was too upset for her to get to cherish the moment.

"I don't know what to tell you," she said, shrugging. Out of all the things she had found out in the past twenty-four hours, the idea that she had been manipulated by God into meeting Lucifer didn't even make the list of unnerving things. If something that brought her as much happiness as he did had been predestined, who was she to argue?

"I had a life before you," she told him. "I have a life now outside of you. You are not the be all and end all of my existence, and if humans have free will and I'm still human, then I must have free will too. Which means I can say fuck your dad's plans and walk out of here for good."

He flinched, paling and looking away from her. Okay, bad example. She reached out, laying a hand on his arm. With gentle pressure, she forced him to turn enough that he was almost facing her.

"Or," she said, gentle, letting her hand slide down until she had him by the wrist, her thumb running soothing circles over his pulse point. "Or, we can say fuck him together, and be happy, whatever happy looks like for us."

His gaze slowly slid to hers, and for a moment she thought that she had gotten through to him. But his eyes were shining with something that definitely wasn't happiness. It was the face of someone who was about to make a grand sacrifice. In this case, a sacrifice that wasn't necessary, but she would respect his wishes. If he wanted out... Her hand slipped off his wrist, but before she could let go entirely, he was twining his fingers through hers and looking down at their clasped hands, shaking his head before he looked up at her.

"No, I can't ask you to do that for me." He let go and took a step backwards, and Chloe felt her blood start to boil.

"Lucifer," she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. "What if — and this is just a thought — you stopped trying to make decisions for me and let me make my own. Or would you rather to dictate my life like you seem to think God is doing already?"

It was a low blow, she knew that, but it was enough to snap him out of his stupor. Outrage colored his features, and he opened his mouth to yell, but no sound came out and after a second, he shut it with a snap. He closed his eyes, and were he anyone else, she'd think he was praying for strength. When he opened him, there was just a tinge of hellfire dancing in his pupils. She shivered.

"See?" he said, taking her shiver the entire wrong way. "You don't really want this."

"Oh good, now you're telling me what I want?" He was angling for a good slap was what he was doing, whether he knew it or not. "Get over yourself. If you tell me, to my face, right now, that you would be happier if I turned and left, then I'll do it. I can't fight for someone who's trying to let go.

"But," she continued before he could get a word in, before the small dark part of her that couldn't believe someone like him was interested in someone like her could start making its voice heard and causing her doubt. "I know what will make me happy, and it definitely isn't watching you let your father control your life and turn you into a puppet he can jerk this way and that."

"Excuse me," he said, scowling. "I'm trying to _not_ do what He wants me to do. He's not controlling anything."

"So you're telling me that if you didn't know that he had a hand in my conception, however distant, you would still be walking away right now?" Her heart was beating against her ribs, trying to escape and fly away from the entire conversation. As confident as she knew she sounded, she wasn't actually entirely sure he wouldn't be.

"I-" he said. Then he slumped back, leaning against the railing and shuddering a little. "No, of course not, but you must understand-"

"No," she said, and stepped forward until she could flick him on the nose. He looked up at her in shock. " _You_ need to understand. I'll let you go if that's what you want. I won't be happy about it, but I can't make you stay." He was watching her with wide eyes, hanging onto her every word. She could break him in this moment, if she said the wrong thing. It filled her with a strange sense of power, knowing the control she had over the _Devil_.

She would get over it someday, but that day was not today.

"But," she said, "if you're not following your heart — wherever it takes you — then you're just falling into his whole ineffable plan."

He narrowed his eyes at the reference and she grinned for a moment before sobering. "What do _you_ , Lucifer, want?"

For a moment, he looked so taken aback that she felt her heart shatter for him. No one should look that surprised to be asked what they wanted. He spent so much time asking other people what they wanted, fulfilling their deepest desires, but did anyone ever ask him what he wanted? She would guess, from the look on his face, the answer was no.

He swallowed thickly, his eyes cutting away from hers as he said, in almost a whisper, "I want you to choose me."

She stepped forward into his space at that, and drew him into her arms, pulling his head down and kissing him, hopefully pouring her feelings into it so he knew just how much she meant what she was about to say. When she pulled back, he looked dazed, like he couldn't believe what was happening to him. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him as tight as she could until he started hugging her back, his face buried in her hair. "I chose you a long time ago," she said. "I'm not going to stop now."

**Author's Note:**

> ~~This is a standalone fic and is definitely not getting a sequel that is like 5k worth of wing porn.~~
> 
> I lied.


End file.
